53 Results in the "Burned Cover" category
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Chapter
11 – The Hunters
Erika pulled up to the rundown arcade a full hour before midnight, their expected meeting time. The old beater van was still parked around back. Rick’s ride, presumably. Joining it was a motorcycle. Not one of those sleek modern things, but an old-school Harley. The owner clearly took care of it. Most of it was polished up to a shine that gleamed in Erika’s headlights. She pulled up alongside it, hopped out, and was just about to knock on the arcade’s rear door when she heard muffled voices…-
197.8 K • Ongoing
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“Hello!” Erika called out. “Anyone home?” The aged wooden door creaked, long and squeaky, as Erika pushed it open. A darkened foyer greeted her. One musty rug sat on the floor while massive webs clung to the corners. A grandfather’s clock, frozen in time, stood just in front of a set of stairs. A heavy scent of mold hung in the air, thankfully swept away by a sharp draft that blew in from behind Erika. She stepped inside, taking in the environment. It certainly gave off a perfect spooky…
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197.8 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
10 – i – Bounty
Noblesse Oblige. Before Sargon of Akkad united his peoples and formed his empire, before the pharaohs of old Egypt erected their monuments to their own demise, before the Romans built their roads, and before humans made the paradigm shift from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural society, man hid in caves and cowered from the monsters that lurked in the night. The apex predator, the tool-using top of the food chain… Those titles did not belong to humanity. They weren’t the dominant species. Not…-
197.8 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
10 – A Brief Moment of Normalcy
Erika sat in the back of her math class, phone in her lap, flicking her thumb up and up and up. Mister de Vries teemed with a lot of news about binomial theorems, but she found the subject even less interesting than she normally did. School as a whole wasn’t quite what it used to be in her mind. Before, she had thought she would live a relatively normal life, albeit one in which she had a few party tricks to show off. It was a life where she still needed connections, networking, and social skills to…-
197.8 K • Ongoing
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Finding a hotel in Chicago, even on short notice, wasn’t much of a trial. A few hundred hotels, motels, hostels, inns, and bed-and-breakfasts were scattered throughout the city. Erika had no particular preference, as long as the place was clean and discreet. The kind of place she could get into with cash and few questions asked. Cash was the important bit. Perhaps it was paranoia, but after having been in a massive archive that seemed to catalog everything, from street light patterns to the mayor’s…
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197.8 K • Ongoing
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Erika held fast to the handrail of the subway car, watching the sparse lights outside the windows fly past. People sat around her, occupying the seats and, occasionally, standing off to the sides. They talked among themselves, listened to music with their earbuds, and generally just lived. It had been a week since that ‘gas leak’ shut down the subway, and everyone was already perfectly willing to trust that everything had been taken care of. To be fair, everything had been taken care of. Erika knew…
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197.8 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
08 – Unpressed Charges
“Yep… dragged us off to the station and read us our rights,” Rick grumbled as he sat in the back room of Varn’s, typing away on his laptop. “Good thing Leslie wasn’t there. He’s got a family to worry about.” “Excuse me?” Anna said, narrowing her eyes. “I have a mother to take care of. Leslie’s family can take care of themselves—” “It isn’t a competition, Anna. And you know Leslie would help your mom out if something happened to you.” Anna stared at the back of…-
197.8 K • Ongoing
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Erika followed the navigation on her phone, turning down one of the seedier streets in Chicago. It was up north, pretty much the opposite side of the city from where Erika and Daniel lived. It was, nonetheless, the street he had given her over the phone. She drove down, frowning at every building she passed: a video rental place that looked sketchy as shit next to a store advertising clothes, shoes, erotic toys, and lingerie; a hookah lounge; and two separate tattoo parlors with signs so faded they were…
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197.8 K • Ongoing
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It was some small consolation that there was next to no traffic or pedestrians in the area of the Old St. Patrick’s Church at three in the morning. Erika didn’t want to look too suspicious as she stalked around the church, but even a priest would get an odd side-glance walking around at this hour. That said, Erika wasn’t one for subtlety. That nun was in some way associated with this church. Maybe finding Friar Tuck inside would be an acceptable alternative. If Erika could ask a question or…
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197.8 K • Ongoing
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Chapter
07 – i – The Art
What a mess. First, The Castle and The Puppet. Now this? The Art surveyed the subway utility tunnel with a vacant expression. The doll-like porcelain face she wore couldn’t emote. If it could, she imagined it would have been twisted in a disgusted snarl. At the very least, her nose would have wrinkled from the foul stench lingering in the air. Like rancid sewer pipes. The Art didn’t find it all that unpleasant, if she were being honest. It was almost… fragrant. Her senses and…-
197.8 K • Ongoing
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